A blog about a family who left on a major sailing trip starting in the Great Lakes.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

School Boat - 236

This summer we spent six weeks living on the boat. One of the things that we worried about is whether the girls would be able to focus on homework in the middle of the daily sailing activities. It turns out that at least for our children, the sailboat has just the right mix of quiet/energy for doing studies. We are going to home school (of course) when we go on our trip next June, starting out with our own texts and lesson plans, and probably migrating to a system like Calvert. Deb has 12 years of teaching experience and this should help. We are well aware of the challenges of teaching your own children, but it is my belief that school on the boat will be a better learning style for them, especially my oldest Jannelle who has always struggled with a traditional learning system. We will be moving to a system like Calvert because it has standardized testing built in so that we don't fall in the trap that every parent falls into - thinking that their child is "above average". We hope to meet other parents cruising who are doing the same thing and gang together. We are excited to tackle this part of the adventure as a family.